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How New York turned urban gridlock on its head

José Holguín-Veras, who’s set to speak at Concordia this month, co-authored a revolutionary solution to traffic congestion
January 15, 2014
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By Yuri Mytko


New York City
With initiatives like New York City’s Off-Hour Truck Delivery pilot program, “everybody wins,” says José Holguín-Veras. | Photo by Elvis Payne, Flickr Creative Commons

Life in any metropolis comes with its share of traffic, noise and pollution. But in New York City, the world’s financial capital, these everyday realities are magnified.

Trucks and commercial vehicles are both the cause and victims of congestion on New York’s streets. In 2009, the city’s Department of Transportation and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) set out to combat this problem, improve air quality and help businesses control costs through an innovative plan: the Off-Hour Truck Delivery pilot program. On January 23, José Holguín-Veras, one of the plan’s architects, is coming to Concordia to speak about the lessons it taught the city.

For the Off-Hour Truck Delivery program, participating businesses agreed to shift their delivery windows from peak hours to between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. They found that cutting deliveries during the business day allowed them to focus more on their customers; carriers, meanwhile, experienced fewer delays and enjoyed easier parking. The participants also noted increased savings. Since the trucks could make more deliveries in shorter periods, they saved money on fuel costs and were able to use smaller fleets of vehicles. And other citizens — particularly cyclists — benefited from reduced noise and congestion.

José Holguín-Veras (at right) is the director of RPI’s Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment. His lecture at Concordia marks the first official collaboration between the John Molson School of Business’s David O’Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise (DOCSE) and CN Centre for Studies in Sustainable Supply Chain Management (CN Centre).

Holguín-Veras — a professor of civil and environmental engineering, and an expert in freight transportation modelling and economics, as well as humanitarian logistics — will explain how the Off-Hour Truck Delivery project proved the viability of aneconomic model for deliveries that also helps reduce congestion and pollution.

“We’re delighted to welcome José to Concordia,” says DOCSE director Paul Shrivastava. “Finding innovative solutions to critical transportation challenges is a key area of research.”

José Holguín-Veras
José Holguín-Veras is visiting JMSB on January 23.

Ahmet Satir, director of the CN Centre, echoes Shrivastava’s enthusiasm for Holguin-Veras’s talk. “Our centre is keen to learn more about projects that encourage and support intelligent transportation system technologies to help cities and communities fight congestion and reduce harmful emissions.”

For his part, Holguín-Veras is proud of the results the off-hour concept yielded. “This is an excellent example — and probably one of the most important and prominent examples — of what can be accomplished when academia, the public sector and private companies join forces to tackle challenging goals such as achieving sustainable urban freight deliveries,” he says.

“In essence, off-hour deliveries lead to reduced congestion and environmental pollution, increased competitiveness of the urban area and an increase in quality of life conditions. Everybody wins.”

José Holguín-Veras will speak in Room MB-10.121 of the John Molson School of Business (MB) Building from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. (noon) on Thursday, January 23.

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